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Page 42
What Is Money?
"Hateful money! hateful money!" cried F----, the economist,
despairingly, as he came from the Committee of Finance, where a project
of paper money had just been discussed.
"What's the matter?" said I. "What is the meaning of this sudden dislike
to the most extolled of all the divinities of this world?"
F. Hateful money! hateful money!
B. You alarm me. I hear peace, liberty, and life cried down, and
Brutus went so far even as to say, "Virtue! thou art but a name!" But
what can have happened?
F. Hateful money! hateful money!
B. Come, come, exercise a little philosophy. What has happened to
you? Has Croesus been affecting you? Has Mondor been playing you false?
or has Zoilus been libelling you in the papers?
F. I have nothing to do with Croesus; my character, by its
insignificance, is safe from any slanders of Zoilus; and as to Mondor--
B. Ah! now I have it. How could I be so blind? You, too, are the
inventor of a social reorganization--of the _F---- system_, in fact.
Your society is to be more perfect than that of Sparta, and, therefore,
all money is to be rigidly banished from it. And the thing that troubles
you is, how to persuade your people to empty their purses. What would
you have? This is the rock on which all reorganizers split. There is not
one, but would do wonders, if he could only contrive to overcome all
resisting influences, and if all mankind would consent to become soft
wax in his fingers; but men are resolved not to be soft wax; they
listen, applaud, or reject, and--go on as before.
F. Thank heaven, I am still free from this fashionable mania. Instead
of inventing social laws, I am studying those which it has pleased
Providence to invent, and I am delighted to find them admirable in their
progressive development. This is why I exclaim, "Hateful money! hateful
money!"
B. You are a disciple of Proudhon, then? Well, there is a very simple
way for you to satisfy yourself. Throw your purse into the Seine, only
reserving a hundred sous, to take an action from the Bank of Exchange.
F. If I cry out against money, is it likely I should tolerate its
deceitful substitute?
B. Then I have only one more guess to make. You are a new Diogenes,
and are going to victimize me with a discourse _� la Seneca_, on the
contempt of riches.
F. Heaven preserve me from that! For riches, don't you see, are not a
little more or a little less money. They are bread for the hungry,
clothes for the naked, fuel to warm you, oil to lengthen the day, a
career open to your son, a certain portion for your daughter, a day of
rest after fatigue, a cordial for the faint, a little assistance slipped
into the hand of a poor man, a shelter from the storm, a diversion for a
brain worn by thought, the incomparable pleasure of making those happy
who are dear to us. Riches are instruction, independence, dignity,
confidence, charity; they are progress, and civilization. Riches are the
admirable civilizing result of two admirable agents, more civilizing
even than riches themselves--labour and exchange.
B. Well! now you seem to be singing the praises of riches, when, a
moment ago, you were loading them with imprecations!
F. Why, don't you see that it was only the whim of an economist? I cry
out against money, just because everybody confounds it, as you did just
now, with riches, and that this confusion is the cause of errors and
calamities without number. I cry out against it because its function in
society is not understood, and very difficult to explain. I cry out
against it, because it jumbles all ideas, causes the means to be taken
for the end, the obstacle for the cause, the alpha for the omega;
because its presence in the world, though in itself beneficial, has,
nevertheless, introduced a fatal notion, a perversion of principles, a
contradictory theory, which, in a multitude of forms, has impoverished
mankind and deluged the earth with blood. I cry out against it, because
I feel that I am incapable of contending against the error to which it
has given birth, otherwise than by a long and fastidious dissertation to
which no one would listen. Oh! if I could only find a patient and
benevolent listener!
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